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Hierodeacon Father Dionysios Firfiris (of its civil name Dimitrios Koukos), an authentic interpreter of byzantine music, was born in 1912 in the village of Megali Panaya of Chalkidiki. At the age of eight, he came to Mount Athos, in 1920, in Karyes, exactly where his uncle, monk Charalambos, was living in the kelion of prophet Eliah, a dependance of the Koutloumousiou monastery. Here, near by monk Charalambos, he studied and learned sacred music developping the charism of his beautiful voice and imposing himself as a brillant follower of style, ethos, and tradition of interpretation of elder and famous musicians of Mount Athos, such as monk Synesios of Stavronikita, teacher of father Dionysios. He had been singing in the Protaton of Karyes from 1930.
In the interpretation of Father Dionysios, one remarks clever and full knowledge of the action of signs, the living expression of musical phrases associated to a technic of deep inspiration and perfection. It is an interpretation full of monastic joyous sadness and based on a rocky faith.
The great art of father Dionysios has been collected in a series of recordings edited in tapes by the Greek Byzantine Choir (mostly those wich concern the oral tradition but also those wich are being sun nowadays), and also in the large program of research by M.K. Htziyakoumis, where he interpretes the Doxastarion of Iakovos Protopsaltis (+1800) of the Great Church of Christ (Oecumenical Patriarchate) and othe great pieces of music.
Father Dionysios fell asleep in the Lord on the April 6th/Mars 24th, 1990.
(by Lycourgos Angelopoulos, translation : Emmanuel-Frédéric Pichas)